


In Return for Grace

by Hannah



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Consensual Possession, F/M, Ghost Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 18:16:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19090468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah
Summary: The first personal thing Cordelia ever learned about Dennis – not anything to do with how he’d died, but about who he was – was that he had beautiful penmanship.





	In Return for Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [yourlibrarian](https://yourlibrarian.dreamwidth.org/) and [flamingsword](https://flamingsword.dreamwidth.org/) for beta-reading. Title comes from “Beautiful Day” by U2.

The first personal thing Cordelia ever learned about Dennis – not anything to do with how he’d died, but about who he was – was that he had beautiful penmanship. It didn’t matter what he was using or what he was writing on, be it pen, pencil, or the dry-erase markers for the board she’d stuck up on the fridge. All the letters were clear and smooth, all the commas neat and tidy, the lowercase I in her name dotted with a gentle touch and everything punctuated correctly. Cordelia hadn’t expected that about him, but when she thought about it, it made sense, really: penmanship had been a big thing when he’d been alive. She could imagine him as a kid sitting at one of those old wood-topped desks, hunched over a sheet of lined paper and working on his cursive. Some skills carried over into the afterlife; it turned out penmanship was one of them.

It wasn’t like she could call what he did _handwriting_. Ghostwriting, maybe, but she wouldn’t say that out loud. Not a second time. He was sensitive about that – sulking for days, slow with the morning coffee, tossing cold spots around. He didn’t hold a grudge when he knew she hadn’t meant anything by it, and she’d apologized immediately, but she wasn’t going to deny him his God-given right to a good snit.

The first time she saw his writing, it was her third morning in her apartment. She’d left her purse out on the couch after needing a shower pronto to get some demon slime out of her hair. She’d woken up to find the note on her bedside table, apologizing for rifling through her things, which he knew was a big no. But, as he explained, he’d make it up to her and wouldn’t do it again, now that he had something he could use to let him talk to her as best as he could manage. 

He’d fit a lot of words onto the sheet from the little memo pad she’d grabbed from Wolfram & Hart’s offices with the pen she’d nabbed at the same time. Evil lawyers could afford to lose a few pens now and then, and knowing the place and how evil it was, petty office theft was probably something they encouraged. Just to be a little more evil. So really, stealing from them to help Cordelia – and then Dennis – was a good thing. Not in the least because she was glad to be able to have conversations with him.

They’d been slow, stilted conversations at first, because she could talk as fast as she could think, but he still had to write his words down. It wasn’t long before she’d brought a board home – it’d been Mr. Giles’s idea, something he’d remembered from some monsters they’d dealt with back in Sunnydale a couple months earlier. She’d almost run out of the apartment to the nearest craft store in the middle of that phone call. Dennis had gone crazy with the markers, doodling and scribbling and making all sorts of loops and squiggles just for the fun of it.

There were a lot of things he’d missed out on while being stuck in the wall and then being stuck in the apartment with his crazy mom. He might’ve seen dry-erase markers at some point if he hadn’t been all Casket of Amontillado’d. She’d gotten him a colored set so he’d have a little more stuff to play with: the sight of a dozen markers swirling through the air, a new color for each letter with each of them still written out so nicely had made her laugh out loud for how amazing it looked. She’d grown up in Sunnydale and saw all sorts of whacked-out bad and nasty stuff at work. It was easy to forget how fantastic the world she lived in could be, sometimes.

She loved that about him. How he helped remind her.

She loved helping him remember, too.

The whole reason for the call in the first place was – well, it wasn’t that she didn’t believe Wesley when he told her what he knew and answered all her questions. It was just that she wanted to be really, absolutely sure about what the two of them were thinking of getting into, especially when it’d been her idea. She knew it was a thing that happened, and she was pretty sure it was a thing people did, but she didn’t know if it was a thing she and Dennis could do. What with the visions and all. What with Dennis being tied to a specific location and all. If they could do everything they wanted or just some stuff. She wanted to be certain ahead of time.

She’d stumbled over the idea one day, sitting on the couch and drinking tea after a case that’d been easy enough to solve. “It was pretty sad, really. She missed her sister, and all she thought she could do was, well, get in there and make it right. She didn’t even try to talk things out, just, pfft, climb on in, and…” She’d whipped her head up to stare at the empty space around her that Dennis was in. All the empty space. 

“Oh. Oh, man. Hang on, Dennis, I have to make a phone call and don’t listen in, okay? I need this to be private.” 

Because if it wasn’t going to work, she didn’t want to disappoint him. 

Both Wesley and Mr. Giles said it’d be okay as long as she and Dennis both wanted to do it. The main struggles came with one side resisting or fighting it. If the two of them were on board, there shouldn’t be any problems. Mr. Giles hadn’t pried, and Wesley had smiled in that careful English way and wished them well.

There hadn’t been any problems.

The first time they’d tried it there had been an emergency kit of anti-possessives and binding ingredients and an extra couple of enchanted bracelets just in case. She’d exorcised ghosts before and didn’t ever want to hear Dennis make those noises, not ever. They both wanted to be sure that if things went south, he’d be able to take care of it. She’d laid down on her bed on top of the covers, like she was taking a nap: fully dressed, shoes off, hair down. Relaxing herself, letting it happen, knowing he wouldn’t hurt her. Breathing gently, in and out, in and out, in – _and in._

The thing with the two of them both wanting it to happen meant that Cordelia stayed inside, too. They still couldn’t talk to each other, but she wasn’t gone. The first time she’d had Dennis inside her was kind of like when she woke up in the middle of the night and was stumbling around to reach the bathroom but _not_ trying to wake up. That sort of awareness of what she was doing without thinking much about it. Except that time, she’d been able to see everything that happened and feel everything he was doing. She was sitting up, clenching her hands into fists, looking at her hands – _really_ looking at her hands. She could tell, not in words but in the sort of pure feeling that Dennis lived as, that all friendly ghosts were, that it’d been so long since he’d had hands he didn’t know what to do with them.

He spent five minutes clapping. Five solid minutes of slapping one palm against another to feel them come together and hear the sound it made.

Now that they knew what they were doing was safe and were both used to it, it was almost exactly like when she’d been a kid riding in the back seat of the family car. A long drive home after a weekend away where she felt ready to be in her own bed, curled up and pressing her forehead against the window. She could watch everything go by while feeling safe in knowing home was where she was going. Knowing someone else was doing the work of taking her there.

It was how they always did it now.

_I’m really looking forward to this_ , the green marker squeaked out. Green for excitement and anticipation, black for ordinary messages, red for emergencies: the benefits of having every color meant each of them could mean something different. When he couldn’t use his voice to communicate tone, he still found ways to _color_ his words. _Yesterday’s weather report said it’d be a clear morning._

“Were you thinking a run around the reservoir?” she asked, sunscreening up the last edges of her face. The words got rubbed away and quickly replaced with new ones, still written perfectly for all the slant of the pen showed how excited he was.

_I was thinking we could try a staircase tour._

“Oh, good idea! We haven’t done one of those in a while.” She double-checked everything – keys, wallet, extra water, cell phone – before lacing up her shoes and standing in the middle of the living room. She closed her eyes, breathed out, “I’m ready when you are.”

It made her feel a little guilty when they did this. Just a little, because she’d never really liked cardio workouts. The weight training parts were fun, you got to egg people on and shout encouragement as they clamped on another pair of twenty-five pound plates and got into the squat cage. But the cardio, even when it was jumping rope, wasn’t ever fun. It’d just been something to get through. But Dennis liked it. Dennis liked it a lot, more than a lot of other things they did together, and she’d wondered about that. But he’d told her flat-out: _I like going outside. What we do together in the apartment is fun, and I love it, and,_ the marker paused, _I appreciate you sharing those intimate moments with me, but I miss going outside._

Intimate moments. Because he might be an embodiment of humanity’s essential spiritual life force, still tethered to the mortal plane, who had spent decades crying out in pure torment and sorrow without any hope of escape or an end to his suffering, but he’d still been raised back when people said that kind of thing all the time. No matter how much TV he watched, some things weren’t going to change.

Los Angeles, though, changed every day. Cordelia could get wanting to head out and see it after spending so much time cooped up in the apartment, never mind being trapped in the wall. Really get out and move like he hadn’t been able to and used to dream about, sometimes, when dreaming hadn’t hurt too much. 

He locked the front door behind him, adjusted the shoelaces one last time, looked around at the early morning street, and started running. Along the sidewalk, through the streets, going slowly at first and building up speed as he went. Making sure to pay attention to every moment of Cordelia’s body, her heart and lungs and her toes and spine. He’d been a ghost for more years than he’d been alive. Some of what that meant was he felt everything, and Cordelia meant _everything_. They’d spent one evening in the bath with him wriggling each of her toes one by one, because when Dennis was inside her, he could make her body do that if he wanted to.

Right now, what he wanted was to run. Run and see what the world had to offer. Cars that looked nothing like what people back in his day expected cars to look like in the far-off future of 2001. The atomic blast of geraniums and plumeria on someone who didn’t do smells when he wasn’t inside a body. The _feeling_ of that body moving, the air on Cordelia’s arms and the sunlight on his skin. Running up the stairs two at a time and the strain in her calves, _loving_ that strain because it was the feeling of a body in the joy of motion. Looking down at all the stairs he’d climbed and raising his arms up for victory before getting back to the run, Cordelia just along for the ride. 

The weather report had been right: it was a gorgeous day. It was the sort of day that got used to sell LA as a premiere housing destination, the sort of day that the two of them could spend every hour outside, if they wanted. She asked without words, and he said yes in the same way, taking it from her and holding it gently. And he kept running. There would be coffee, and sandwiches, maybe even ice cream. Exploring what there was to see, not quite a date and not quite just two friends going out. Something that wasn’t complicated, either. It was a pretty simple – 

“Shit!” Dennis shouted, grabbing Cordelia’s head, because he’d been raised to be a gentleman but even _dying_ didn’t hurt as much as a vision coming on – _oh shit the pain –_

_– palm trees, apartment building, catch the color of the walls –_

_– no fangs, open mouth, all human in the face, tall woman with short hair –_

_– knife, writing on the blade, not in her hands, held by –_

– and Cordelia was left alone, breathing hard, kneeling on the sidewalk somewhere far out in Silver Lake. The images echoed in the emptiness Dennis’s ejection left behind. A death, definitely a death, maybe a killing, could be a murder, could be something worse. It’d been at night, so they might not have a whole lot of time to stop it from happening.

But first things first. 

A call to the Hyperion and then to Wesley’s. Painkillers, the good ones, beautiful little white pills to take the worst of the edge off. Peanut butter energy bar, to head off the nausea said beautiful little white pills tended to bring on if she took them on an empty stomach. A little drink of water, swishing it around her mouth before spitting it out because, somehow, doing that always helped her feel better. A real drink of water, because Dennis always ran like he was training for a marathon. And then, last but not least, a call to Dennis. Leaving him a message on the machine that she was fine and might be back tonight, because he always got home before she did.

The first time he’d been forced out of her, they’d only been a few blocks from her apartment. She’d sprinted the whole way back, fumbling with her keys and shouting into the empty room, afraid for what might’ve happened, never mind the portent of ritual demonic juntas. He hadn’t answered right away and she’d been scared, afraid, _terrified_ of where she’d sent him, not knowing this sort of thing could happen, wishing she’d thought to ask someone. But then he’d been there, so there she almost cried in joy – Dennis all around her, all through the air. He’d shot right back to the apartment like he’d been fired out of a cannon. _No harm done,_ he wrote. _I mean it, Cordelia,_ because he always wrote her full name, _I was out running along the street, then there was pain from the vision, then I was back here._

If there was anything in between the pain and getting back to the apartment, he didn’t say. She didn’t ask. If there was, he didn’t want to tell her; if there wasn’t, the utter nothingness wouldn’t be something worth dwelling on. Better to think of it as something that happened immediately.

Unlike, say, Wesley and Gunn having to pick her up. Because as long as they were driving out to the Hyperion, they might as well grab her along the way. It wouldn’t be worth it to head home when she’d just have to leave right away. Not even to stop by for a change of clothes, not since she’d wised up the third week of the job and began keeping emergency outfits at the workplace.

They dropped her off that evening, and she didn’t even get the key into the lock when Dennis opened the door for her, welcoming her back and closing it behind her.

“Good to see you, too,” she said. He swirled the air around her head, sliding it through her hair. Oh, that felt nice. “I’m sorry about today. I know you were really looking forward to it.” 

The marker squeaked across the board, _I’m all right. We can head out again later._

“I know, but the thing is, it’s going to be a couple days before we can try for another long outing. It’s a whole mess we’re fixing now that’s not just stopping one guy with one knife somewhere. He’s got a lot of people behind him and we need to make sure everyone got the memo that the party’s cancelled. Otherwise we’re all in for a lot of messy dying.” 

Wesley had explained all the finer points between murder and sacrifice and what tended to happen if you tried for one and got the other by mistake. Cordelia hadn’t listened to him, or to Gunn’s quiet, easy conversation about the importance of solid organizational leadership, regardless of whether they were good or evil. She’d just pressed her forehead against the backseat window and let them drive her home.

She flopped down onto the bed. A pen and pad of paper floated over to rest next to her. _I’m not mad you’re doing important work._

“And that’s why I love you so much. I still want to make today up to you,” she said, pulling off her top. “With a nice, hot shower.” 

_Oh! I see._

“I know it isn’t what you’d hoped for, but maybe you can still have a good time tonight.” 

Five exclamation points, one after another, then a brush of cool air across her bare shoulders. He pulled the curtains closed, and she closed her eyes – and the thing with Dennis riding along was that it’d taken her longer to get used to than having him drive, because she knew he was watching and feeling everything, and it was up to her to make sure he enjoyed himself.

First there was the good, hot shower, scrubbing the grit out from under her fingernails and a deep conditioning from the roots on out to the ends of her hair. Her fanciest bathrobe, a small glass of herb tea, an ice-cream bar from the secret box at the back of the freezer. Earthly pleasures of the flesh with every sense engaged. All pleasures, including a gentle, strong release. With her hands moving just right and her fingers sliding in and out of herself, with Dennis inside, her climax felt like the ocean carrying her to shore.

The first time he’d been inside her, he’d forgotten what he couldn’t do while in a body and tried to grab something from across the room and almost jumped out of her to get it. Now, after she snuggled under the covers, she felt him slip out of her gently, the inside-out feeling of stepping into a nice bath. Cool air on her forehead, a ghost of a kiss lulling her to sleep.

Pleasures of the flesh. Not only the ones she’d expected him to indulge in, but ones that made them both happy.

It was how good relationships worked, after all.


End file.
